Whale watchers aboard Captain Dave’s Dolphin and Whale Watching Safari had an unexpected and heartbreaking encounter with a pod of bottlenose dolphins yesterday. A deceased dolphin calf was being carried by an adult bottlenose dolphin on its back.

This video sends a powerful message and it is a window into a dolphins heart. This animal is laboring under the strain of carrying the deceased calf on its back and is probably keeping it near the surface so the departed dolphin can breathe. Dolphins do not normally swim with their dorsal fins sticking out of the water continuously like this bottlenose did. This poor grieving mother dolphin takes us, without words, to a place where as one of our passengers said in the video “humans and dolphins are not so different.”

The pair were surrounded by other dolphins, almost as if they were being protected, during this profoundly sad time. The dolphin was seen an hour later by another boat still carrying the calf.